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User blog:Rich Varney/Week 11
Exhibition Space: This continues to be a drain on resources and is affecting morale. Things do seem to have settled down with Estates and Facilities, we were offered chairs earlier in the week but were told tables were not available. These continual issues are requiring significant effort to be expended by Gemma, Niamh and me at the cost of doing other things to put on the table. It also make planning extremely difficult. If we are being loaned tables, we need to build a false platform to sit objects on and cover wires as we can obviously not start drilling holes in the table. This requires the dimensions of the table to be known. With the lab open at the weekend, the plan was for me to drive in and avail of free parking for the day on Sunday to bring in tools and materials to construct the platform. However with no knowledge of what size of table if any we will get this plan looked doomed as of Thursday evening. Evan suggested that we should consider how we would divide Westland Square as a fallback plan if things become unworkable with 1013/4. My opinion is that we are not at this point yet, but it is certainly prudent to consider the option if the situation does not improve by Tuesday. I discussed this with the other project managers and there is broad agreement on this. Gemma discussed the situation with the course director, Glenn Strong, on Friday and he has agreed that we can buy tables in IKEA for our project. I have identified a 1m by 0.6m table for €16.90 and have agreement from Glenn to buy 5 of these. This would give us the option of different configurations from 1m by 3m to 5m by 0.6m. There is also agreement that we can hire or buy some lighting. We are now considering buying LED strip lighting in IKEA that could be used to light the underside of the table. I am going to get the items in IKEA on Saturday – I had offers of help from the team, but practically speaking it will be quicker to go on my own. Hopefully I will then be reimbursed by TCD. Sunday remains planned as “DIY” day where I will bring tools to construct the tables and modify them. Glenn also suggested that someone needed to get quotes for movers to move equipment to 1013/4. There are things that need to be moved professionally for insurance purposes as well as from a practical viewpoint. I had a hasty meeting with the other PMs which ended with Mark agreeing that he and Joe would take care of the quotes from movers and I put Gemma forward for looking into lighting hire although it now looks likely that each team will make their own arrangements on that front. The mock up this week was a useful exercise, in some ways it made me feel the project is more on track that I had previously thought. We are still walking a tightrope to be honest. Pocket watch time dilation: This is all but complete. The code is working and tested apart from one final addition of being able to calibrate clocks and synchronise the clocks at power up. As of this evening I have tested this with different equipment at home, giving me confidence that it will just be a matter of final tweaking requiring an hour or so. The maximum speed that clocks can run at varies from clock to clock, some frequencies work better than others so it is just a matter of finding these values for the particular clocks. I’m pleased with the overall piece – the particularly give the challenges of integrating the clock ticks, graphics rendering and touch functionality on top of each other. For example keeping the clocks ticking while graphics are rendered. NFC / RFID: The seven segment displays have arrived and I will attempt to get this item turned around in the next 3-4 days. It is dependent on me getting time to work on this with as few other distractions as possible. Muscle wire: I have not had time to make further progress on this – again if time permits I may be able to do something rudimentary based on work already done with flowers and the butterfly but the wire has proved much more of a challenge to get something effective from than I had hoped. Mad Hat: I also ordered a hat which has arrived and this morning cut a hole and stitched in a TFT screen. Getting this to display a series of images will be trivial on the back of the work I have done for the pocket watch piece – the hardest part of this will be coming up with good images – I may see if the team want to come up with some of these if people are not snowed under in the next few days. I need to come up with a way to power the Arduino by battery but this should not be too difficult. Category:Blog posts